Reunited by TikTok: in Indonesia, long-lost twins find each other after more than 20 years

Sisters Treni and Trena were separated weeks after their birth, and the family lost touch with them after sectarian violence in 1999 forced them to move

But when Treni’s popular videos on social media drew the attention of Trena’s neighbour, mistaken identity led to a joyful reunion

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Treni and Trena, two long-lost twin Indonesian sisters reunited thanks to TikTok. Photo: Treni Fitriyana/YouTube

Published: 3:00pm, 24 Oct 2020Updated: 8:11pm, 2 Nov 2020

Two Indonesian twin sisters who were separated several weeks after their birth have been reunited, against all odds – and it’s all thanks to TikTok.

Treni Fitri Yana, now a blogger and online store owner, and housewife Trena Mustika were born 24 years ago to a couple in the city of Ambon, the capital of the remote Maluku province in eastern Indonesia. Their parents were migrants from West Java who had relocated to the province in the 1990s under a government transmigration programme to level out population density across the archipelago.

But trouble struck a few years after the family arrived. “We received a suggestion from a respected elder in Maluku that if we raised Trena and Treni together, they would die,” Enceng Dedi, the twins’ biological father, told local news website Kompas.com.

“My wife’s sibling had raised twins and they both died,” Enceng said, without mentioning the cause of their deaths. “We were scared, so we asked [our neighbours] to raise our daughters when they were two months old.”

For nearly two years, Enceng and his wife visited the twins at both their adoptive homes, until sectarian violence between Muslims and Christians broke out in the Christian-majority province in 1999. The conflict lasted four years, forcing many Javanese migrants, including Enceng and his family, to return to their hometowns.